Best-Science-Book Lists: A Short List

Someday soon, genomics will uncover a list-making gene. Until that day comes and someone patents the listing impulse and tries to charge us, we offer here—free of charge—our second annual list of best-science-book lists. This year, it’s a short list.

One of the best and most intriguing annual general book list is The New York Times100 notable—which always includes a smattering of science titles. But this year was particularly notable in that two of The Times’ top five nonfiction titles on its 10 best list were science-related: On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss and The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, the latter of which is included in a science-, medicine- and technology-rich Washington Postnonfiction 50 notables list and the less science-friendly Library Journaltop 10. Biss and Kolbert also made the Publishers Weekly general nonfiction list, along with two others the Bookshelf was pleased to find there: Lives in Ruins, Marilyn Johnson’s love letter to archaeologists, and renowned mind-scientist Steven Pinker’s non-preachy, often amusing and infinitely useful writing guide, The Sense of Style.

The Sixth Extinction led The Guardian‘s list—twice, on its main but brief science-book list and on the GrrlScientist blog (for books in the biosciences; the insatiably erudite GrrlScientist also compiled lists in medicine, physics, nature and even one for the birds). Another science bookworm-blogger, Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, had the guts to rank her selections (top pick: Alan Lightman’s The Accidental Universe).

Nanoraves

21 October 2015

The simple message of The Secret Lives of Bats (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt): Humankind should praise these seed-spreading, pollinating, insect-pest-munching flying mammals rather than kill them. Unfortunately, we have been more successful at the latter, and in alarming numbers worldwide, as author Merlin Tuttle tells the tale, subtitled My Adventures with the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals. Tuttle, a bat researcher since boyhood who founded Bat Conservation International, has spent the past 50 years in the field (and the cave) setting the record straight. Spinning engaging stories that star moonshiners, farmers and other bat-curious, Tuttle is a personable and plainspoken guide through a world inaccessible to most.

21 September 2015

Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century isn’t just a good writing guide. It’s one of the best books published in the past year. Wise, funny, practical and, as of this writing, ranked in the top 20 of three Amazon writing-guide categories, it will find an even wider audience after its Penguin-paperback debut this week. Pinker isn’t a scold who ascribes bad writing to laziness or ill will. He explains why otherwise well-intended writers fail. For example, are scientists and other jargon-drenched writers trying to shut the rest of us out? No, he says. In the subtitle of a chapter called “The Curse of Knowledge,” Pinker nails it: “The main cause of incomprehensible prose is the difficulty of imagining what it’s like for someone else not to know something that you know.” He’s also strategic, preparing readers before laying a serious but fascinating grammar lesson on them unlike anything you’ll find in The Elements of Style, in print for 56 years. May Pinker’s words on writing enjoy a similar run.